


Seeds of Change

by Amarxlen



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Gen, KH3 spoilers, Lost Trio, Namine - Freeform, Namine may be soft but she keeps these boys in line, Repliku, Riku Replica - Freeform, Vanitas especially, emo edgelords love their soft artist, post kh3, vanitas - Freeform, what if they all lived in the old mansion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26399743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amarxlen/pseuds/Amarxlen
Summary: For all his existence, Vanitas has been looking to the future. Merging with Ventus, forging the x-blade, working as one of the thirteen darknesses - but now that it's all said and done and there's time to breathe, he's not sure what the future holds anymore. Just that it seems to include two unlikely companions... and maybe that's all he needs.
Relationships: Namine & Vanitas & Repliku, Namine & Vanitas & Riku Replica
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Seeds of Change

**Author's Note:**

> A Kingdom Hearts oneshot written for The Trios of Heart: a kingdom hearts fanzine.

_ Seeds of Change _

Of all the places that Vanitas had been to in his existence, he’d never been anywhere quite like this. Then again, outside of the few odd exceptions, he’d never taken the time to really look around at the worlds he’d visited either. He vaguely remembered a battle in a native encampment, and walking through a cobblestoned town overlooked by an impressive castle. The memories of the island where he spoke to Ventus were a little bit clearer, the sheer amount of light there both repulsive and fascinating. He’d been there longer than he’d meant to, waiting for Ventus to catch up with him. In the end he still wasn’t sure whether he loved that island or hated it. Looking at it had been too similar to looking at Ventus.

But this place…

Vanitas, head resting in his hand, closed his eyes, shutting out the world of perpetual twilight outside the window.  _ His _ window now. That was an even stranger thing to process than the fact that the sun never seemed to rise or set here, just linger persistently in the sky. As strange as it was though, it wasn’t bad. Not stifling in the way the Land of Departure was when Ventus insisted Vanitas go back with them, or in the way the islands, and that cobblestoned town were. It was nothing like the Badlands, vast and cold and—

He opened his eyes again. Thinking about the Badlands was one of the worst things he could do, and yet it never seemed to be far from his thoughts. He didn’t know if things were better now, or if they even could be for him. All he knew was that everything was different, in ways that he didn’t understand yet. 

A soft knock came at the — his — door, though he didn’t deign to look up at it. He knew that there were two ways this scenario would play out. The first was that, whoever it was, though he had an idea who was knocking, would simply heed his non answer and leave. The second was that they would ignore his silence and come in anyway. He never could be sure which option they would choose, but he always hoped they would leave.

No such luck.

He sighed heavily as the door creaked open and left his back to the intruder.

“Don’t remember inviting you in,” he said. Once, the words would have been biting and acerbic, and he wanted them to be now as well. Instead they came out tired and flat. He’d never admit that it was because he  _ was _ tired. Least of all to Naminé.

“You never invite me in, Vanitas.”

He almost smirked. He never would have suspected that this tiny, pale, waif of a girl would be completely unbothered by his abrasiveness. Something about it actually amused him, in a way that most things didn’t.

“But you come in anyway.”

This was something else that was strange — the way he could picture, without turning around, the soft smile that would lift her lips. It seemed that she found him just as amusing as he found her. He couldn’t say that about anyone else.

“I have to check on you,” she answered, voice a little closer than before. He hadn’t heard the door closing behind her and he frowned at how this meant she must have left it open.

“Right,” he drawled. “Gotta do what Venty-Wenty says.” He rolled his eyes. He couldn’t figure out why Ventus cared at all. After all, he hadn’t cared before — not about forging the χ-blade, or why Vanitas had wanted to forge it in the first place. He hadn’t cared about Vanitas one bit until now. Vanitas didn’t know what had changed, but he didn’t trust it. Not in the slightest.

“I’m not doing this for Ventus,” she said, and now her voice was directly behind him. He felt the hairs on his neck stand on end.

“Don’t do that,” he hissed, whirling around to finally face her. Deep blue eyes stared back at him, unperturbed.

“Do what?” She blinked at him, and he hated that the question was genuine. It would have made it much easier to try to dislike her if she actually gave him a reason to. But with those innocent doe eyes, unrelenting concern for his wellbeing, and her lack of any sort of direct connection to him it was impossible. They’d been tossed together by circumstance, but it was only because she’d stuck around that they were still together. It made him feel strange in a way he couldn’t make sense of. If it was because she wanted something from him, or because Ventus had told her to, it would have made much more sense. Nobody stayed with him because they actually wanted to.

_ Except her.  _ Everything about her and the way she interacted with him threw him off-kilter.

“Tch.” He clicked his tongue, as much to himself as to her. “That creepy sneaking-up-on-people thing.” Again, she just blinked before giggling into her hand.

“I didn’t sneak up on you, I knocked.” Vanitas rolled his eyes, turning back to the window. It was another strange feeling to be laughed at. Just as nobody stayed with him, nobody  _ laughed _ at him either. If she was anybody else, he would have had his Keyblade at her throat. He wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t.

“Whatever,” he said. “What do you want, anyway?”

Naminé clasped her hands in front of her, peering out the window alongside him.

“I told you, I came to check on you.”

“Mission accomplished, you can go now.”

There was a moment of silence, and despite himself, he looked up at her, curious. He was surprised to find that she wasn’t looking at him at all. Instead, she was looking outside, to almost the exact same spot he’d been looking at.

Casting his gaze back out the window, he looked down at the plot of land outside the mansion. Calling it “land” however, was a generous statement. Vanitas hadn’t bothered to learn much about the mansion he was staying in — or the people he was sharing it with — but through overheard bits of conversation and Naminé’s insistence, he still knew more than he wanted to. 

The mansion itself had been abandoned for years before a few of the heroes of light made it their stronghold, and then, once they were finished with it too, it was abandoned again. Left empty and uninhabited, dust and cobwebs had settled over the sparse and broken furniture inside the mansion, and the grounds around it had begun to be reclaimed by nature. Small trees had begun sprouting around the perimeter, some intruding almost as far as the walls of the mansion, and other creepers and vines worked their way through the unruly and dying grasses. 

In the midst of it all, there was a patch of plants, just as brown, but even more overgrown than the rest of the grounds. There was nothing remarkable or out of place about it, except for the fact that the worst of the overgrowth ended in a sharp border that created an almost perfect rectangle. This part of the grounds had been tended to, and semi recently at that. Vanitas was by no means a gardening expert, but throughout his existence, he’d been trained to have a certain level of awareness and deductive reasoning. He’d brought his hand back up to rest his chin on and cover his mouth, and now his fingers tightened against his skin. It was something he wouldn’t have survived long without.

“I used to have a garden here,” Naminé said softly.

Vanitas’s eyes flickered to her and then back out the window. He hadn’t meant to show any sort of interest, but the truth was that this revelation surprised him. Tiny Naminé with her delicate hands and pure white dress had done the menial labor of gardening? An image came, unbidden, to his mind of Naminé bent over the plot of earth, dress stained and small hands digging through the dirt. He’d created life before. The Unversed were proof of that, but he’d never created one without the express knowledge and intent that it would be destroyed. Not for the first time, he wondered what it would be like to create something… beautiful. 

Scoffing, he glared down at the patch of earth and said the first thing that came to mind. “You call that overgrown weed patch a garden?”

“Hey!” The irritated outburst drew their attention to the door, where the third and final member of their little ragtag group stood. His arms were crossed and there was a scowl on his face as he glared at Vanitas through silver bangs. “Don’t talk to Naminé like that.”

Vanitas stared at him for a moment and then grinned, making sure to pull his lips back and bare his teeth. This was something he was familiar with. Hostility, disdain. This he could make sense of and handle. 

“Or what?” he goaded. The scowl deepened, but before the Replica could retaliate, Naminé intervened.

“Vanitas.” Though all she said was his name, her face had taken on an unusually stern expression. Vanitas immediately looked away from her and the replica, grin falling as the replica’s smirk grew. “Leave Riku alone,” she continued. Vanitas felt only the most minute bit of satisfaction at the way the replica’s face twisted at the name. He didn’t know or care what the replica’s story was, but mentally filed away the information that he apparently didn’t like to be called by the name of his other. “And Riku,” she said, face and tone softening, “he’s not exactly wrong. I haven’t been able to keep it up.”

Silence fell over the three of them. Of all the things that somehow tied them together, Vanitas understood this one the most. Each of them had, at some point in their existence, ceased to exist, and then each of them had, through miracles of science and magic, been brought back. Now they were adrift, trying to find a place in all the vast worlds that they belonged. Only Vanitas seemed to know the truth: There was no home for creatures like them.

“I’ll help you,” the replica said. 

Vanitas rolled his eyes at the replica’s eagerness. It wasn’t hard to see why he’d tagged along with Naminé to this run down mansion in the middle of nowhere. Though it still didn’t explain why Naminé herself had chosen this place to live in. She could have had her pick of living with any of the heroes of light — an island paradise, the Land of Departure, the very town they’d all woken up in, or the town just on the other side of the woods that surrounded this mansion — and yet she’d chosen a dilapidated manor that most people thought was haunted. It worked out well enough for Vanitas, who didn’t want to be around people to begin with, but Naminé? He just didn’t understand.

“With the garden?” Naminé asked thoughtfully. Her eyes flicked towards the window again, betraying a growing excitement that wasn’t visible on the rest of her face. 

“Yeah.” The replica lowered his crossed arms and took a step into Vanitas’s room, earning himself a scathing glare. The glare went ignored, the replica keeping his eyes on Naminé. He was so pathetically attached to Naminé that Vanitas almost manifested an Unversed with his disgust. Somehow though, he hadn’t created an Unversed in weeks. At times he was profoundly grateful for this, in a way he’d never been grateful for anything in his life. But there were other times he felt, with equal intensity, emptier without their presence around him than he felt just after their creation. It was as though something was missing from him, now that the ability seemed to be gone. 

He hated both feelings immensely. 

“It is something I’ve been wanting to get back to,” Naminé admitted, pressing her fingertips together absentmindedly. 

“Consider it done,” the replica said. He must have thought Vanitas wasn’t paying attention, because he smiled at Naminé softly. Vanitas snorted, and the smile dropped instantly.

“Will you come help us, Vanitas?” 

Though Vanitas tried not to react, he couldn’t keep his eyes from widening at Naminé’s question. Did she actually want his help? Or was this just an invitation born of misplaced pity? Did he even want to go with them?

“Pass.” He turned away, but not quick enough to miss the way Naminé’s expression crumbled, her eyes dropping to the floor as her fingers tightened around each other. Vanitas felt his shoulders tense as his eyes reached the window. The garden was a tangled mess, weeds growing up and around each other, choking the browned stems of what Vanitas could only assume used to be prospering flowers. He knew nothing about gardening, but he knew enough about death and decay to see that the entire thing would have to be ripped up and rebuilt.

There was no way that Naminé could handle pulling up weeds that, as best he could tell, seemed to be almost her height. And despite knowing that the replica would never allow her to strain herself in an attempt to clear all those weeds, the expression on her face still left him with an unpleasant feeling. Had she genuinely wanted him to join them?

“Forget him, Naminé,” the replica scoffed. “He probably wouldn’t be much help anyways.” Had Vanitas not heard the sound of heavy footsteps walking away, he would have risen to the barb. But soon the replica’s footsteps faded, and Vanitas felt, not at peace, but a little better for being alone. 

“You’re still welcome to come,” Naminé said softly. 

His head jerked back around to her, and he almost opened his mouth to ask why she was still there. Instead he said, “I said I’ll pass.”

For a moment, Naminé looked like she might argue further until she simply nodded and headed towards the door. The click of the latch as the door shut signaled her actual departure. Vanitas tried to ignore how the sound seemed to echo through his room, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply through his nose. 

Naminé didn’t take much energy to deal with, at least not usually, despite how much she threw him off-kilter. But dealing with her and the replica at the same time had made him feel as though he needed to manifest and destroy a hundred Unversed to get his thoughts back under control. Did he really  _ want  _ to be down there, doing menial labor for no reason? More importantly, did he actually care if they wanted him down there or not? The knee jerk answer was no, of course not. But as he saw them emerge from the front door of the manor and head towards the weed patch, he frowned, and it was somehow different from how a frown normally felt. 

He watched as Naminé and the replica began working, Naminé reaching up to tuck some hair behind her ear. Somehow, he knew exactly the kind of smile she’d be wearing, and even the way the replica would look at her in response. He wasn’t sure how he knew these things, if it was because they mattered or if he cared. 

Naminé twisted her hair into a ponytail, gesturing with her arm towards where the replica could start working and he dropped to his knees immediately to follow her instructions. The longer Vanitas watched them work, the clearer it became they’d be out there the entire day and would hardly make a dent. His fingers tightened against his cheek again and, before he consciously decided to, he stood. He shook his head resignedly, walking across the room and making his way out of the manor. He couldn’t explain it to himself, any of it — the off-kilter sensation, the wondering what their intentions were, the reason he was leaving the safety of his room. All he knew was that he couldn’t just sit in his room any longer. He’d blame this boring, changeless world.

Vanitas winced as he left the manor, but resisted bringing his hand up to block his face. After a moment, his vision cleared and he could see again, only to find Naminé and the replica looking back at him. He scowled instinctively, not meeting their eyes.

“You came,” Naminé said. As hard as he tried he couldn’t detect an inkling of anything but sincerity in her tone.

“I got bored,” he shrugged. The replica didn’t bother to hide his snort, either of disgust or disbelief, though he never stopped working. Vanitas shot him a glare.

“I see.” Naminé was still smiling at him as she reached up and swiped her hand across her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt in its wake. “Well, we’re happy to have you help,” she continued, either ignoring or not noticing the replica rolling his eyes next to her. “Right now we’re just pulling everything up to make room for new flowers.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vanitas said. “I got it.” He rolled up his sleeves, selecting an area as far from the replica as possible to get started on. It didn’t take long for his hands to become covered in dirt and small cuts that he easily ignored. Tiny cuts like these were nothing compared to the other wounds that had been inflicted on him over the years.

As he worked, he felt tension leave his shoulders and his mind slowly calming. There was no need to think about complicated things like these new emotions Naminé and the replica evoked when he could sit here, as content as he could ever be, pulling up plants root by root, effectively ending their existence.

“Oh wow, Vanitas.” Shoulders tensing again, he looked up at her just slightly. “You’re doing a great job.” This time when she smiled at him, he felt his cheeks warm. Not for the first time, he was struck with irritation about his helmet being nowhere to be found when he had woken up. He wasn’t used to having to control his facial expressions so suddenly.

Vanitas looked back down as a defense, finding that he had actually already cleared a large portion of the earth in front of him. He buried his hands in the dirt and dead plants again, doing his best not to react when Naminé’s voice came from right next to him, just as it had earlier.

“Once the weeds are cleared, we’ll be able to plant new flowers and watch them grow.” She paused, laying her palm flat against the dirt and letting her fingers stretch against it. “We can make something beautiful here.” He met her eyes briefly before she then turned her gaze to the replica. “All three of us.”

Vanitas’s movements stopped all at once. While he’d been pulling up the weeds, he’d only been thinking about the immediate action, not the purpose of it. He hadn’t considered that for once, his destructive actions were actually… helpful. He looked up at Naminé. For once, he was actually helping to create something beautiful with his own two hands. He expected her — or more likely the replica — to ruin the moment by saying something else, but all she did was smile at him again, ever so softly. Vanitas nodded at her in return. He was unable to find any words to respond, but he was starting to think that just maybe, just maybe, he’d found something better instead.


End file.
